My name is Arnold, and I am forty-eight inches tall. For more than fifty years, I have been wandering the world this way. In recent years I have been living in Max Muenster's cellar. The conditions aren't heart-warming, but they aren't shameful either. I have a room with a transom window, a kitchen and a bathroom. I also make my living here: I'm Muenster's cook. Muenster has a little restaurant up above, more like an enlarged canteen, and I supply it from below: sandwiches, salads, soups and cheese-filled blintzes. My food has made a name for itself. "Give me one of Arnold's sandwiches, and if you don't have a sandwich, give me cheese blintzes." My name, it seems, isn't unknown in this neighbourhood. I make a total of four kinds of food, but anyone who has ever tasted them once comes back to ask for them again. True, I'm not the one who gets the compliments or the reward, but every time I hear my name, and my name is mentioned several times a day, a wave of pleasure passes over my body. Everyone, apparently, needs compliments and a little fame.
There were years when I lived among people, and I was an object of mockery and scorn. A dwarf isn't well liked, and people recoil from him. But since I've been working for Muenster, I've hardly had contact with the outside. Sometimes, after work, at half past ten, I go out for a stroll. I have a regular route, and I don't walk far. Tel Aviv isn't a pleasant place at night. An hour's stroll is enough for me.
Every now and then I meet my friend Manfred. Manfred is also a dwarf, an inch taller than me. I met him many years ago. I don't remember whether it was in the orphanage or somewhere else. Over the years, we have undergone the same trials, and we know everything about one another. All dwarfs of our type are similar to one another. But what can I do? Shared trials haven't made us good friends.
When I meet him at night, I'm excited for a moment, as though I had found a lost part of myself. A few minutes pass, and I am filled with sadness. It's hard to bear the similarity between us, our shared fate, and the thought that nothing will change.
Once we used to sit in a café and bring up memories. In recent years I have avoided sitting with him, and the reason is simple: Manfred envies me. He is sure that my job in the cellar is permanent, and that I have a pension fund. Once I told him that my job, like his, is temporary. Muenster can fire me if he feels like it. Manfred didn't believe me. It seemed to him that I was hiding an important secret from him. Long ago, I learned that it is difficult to uproot suspicion from someone's heart. I've tried several times. In the end, I understood that I couldn't convince him or, even less, change him.
Sometimes it seems that there's no connection between us, but then reality slaps me in the face: every month I meet him, and every month I swallow the little dose of suspicion that he feeds me.
Sometimes I feel sorry for him. All these years, he's been working as a cleaner. He gets up at half past four every morning and doesn't finish working until four in the afternoon. When he was young, he tried other work. For two years he worked in a sanitary provisions warehouse, and for a year in a butcher shop. In the end, he went back to the work he had begun with. No wonder he envies me. I have a whole cellar to myself. No one stands over me and tells me what to do. True, I work hard, but it's voluntary servitude. I put a lot of thought into my dishes. My thin sandwich, decorated with fresh vegetables, is quite a thing in this neighbourhood, not to mention my blintzes. My devotion is evident in the work of my hands. People taste them and say, "There's nothing like Arnold's sandwiches."
My friend apparently knows that scepticism and bitterness are not all that guide my life. I have someone that I love and depend on. He tried to worm the secret out of me a few times, but I keep it behind seven locks and keys. At one of our meetings, he stood and looked right at me, saying: "There are things you aren't telling me."
"What, for instance?"
"That's just what I want to know."
"I don't know what you're looking for."
"What you're hiding from me," he stabbed.
"I'm not hiding anything, because I have nothing to hide," I said. But my words only heightened his suspicions.
Five years ago, I fell ill and went to the hospital: a slight heart attack. I was sure that Muenster would fire me, and my fate would be no different from that of my friend Manfred. I, too, would spend the rest of my days cleaning floors and toilets. My fears were groundless. When I returned from the hospital, Muenster's customers stood up and cheered for me: "Arnold!" they shouted, as though I weren't a dwarf but a man who had come back from war decorated with medals. I wept. I hadn't imagined that so many people loved my dishes and, through them, me. Since then, I sometimes hear customers asking about me. Once I heard clearly: "How's Arnold? Why don't we see him?" After that, I had it in mind to write a letter to thank them, and to say that, thanks to them, my health was improving and my spirits were high. I would promise to put more effort into my work and soon they would see the results. But what can I do? By nature, dwarfs are shy. All the dwarfs that I've met prefer darkness to light, isolation to exposure, and I'm like them. Writing a letter to people is beyond my power.
I spend most of the hours of the day in the cellar. Muenster's sandwich shop opens at eight in the morning and stays open without a break until ten at night. Sometimes later. I have no doubt that he got rich at my expense. If it weren't for my delicacies, people would have found themselves another sandwich shop.
I'm not complaining. I have what I need and a bit more. Other dwarfs suffer more than I. If I were to make a list of their sufferings, it would fill a whole notebook. Sometimes it seems that fortune has smiled on me and it would be proper to be more generous. I would do so, but at night I'm so tired that I haven't the strength to get out of bed and look for my brothers. Dwarfs tend to keep a distance from one another. Give them a lair and they'll sleep in it for days.
Every half year Muenster adds a hundred shekels to my salary. He calls that a "bonus," to please my ear with a special word. I know I deserve a lot more. What I invest in the preparations, in precision in the taste, and in the way I arrange the food on the plate - that diligence and devotion are worth more than what I earn. But what can I do? In this world, people aren't paid for diligence and devotion.
I don't complain and I don't bargain. I don't forget: dwarfs aren't well liked, even when they are useful. I'm sorry that my friend Manfred has lived all these years with the feeling of a botched life. More than once, I have thought of handing him a few bills and saying: "Manfred, why don't you take a little vacation. Maybe you'll find another job, a job that suits you."
Two years ago I did hand him a packet of bills and was about to say what I had prepared myself to tell him. Everything from the depths of my heart. He gave me a hard look, full of contempt, as if I had handed him poison or a pistol. "I won't take anything from you," he said curtly.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't deserve it."
"You mustn't refuse a gift offered with pure intentions," I bundled up the words that I had.
"I have principles," he said, curtly again.
"People like us can't allow themselves to live according to principles. Principles belong to the tall. We have to live with compromise. Compromise isn't contemptible, at least not for us."
"'He who hates gifts will live.' That's written in the Bible, haven't you heard?"
I bent over and said to him: "I have nothing to say to you. I meant to help. If you don't want help, it's not my fault. I did my part."
In my innocence, I thought my gesture would bring him closer to me, and that our friendship of days gone by would return. I was wrong. His envy has gotten stronger and become enmity. Once he said, "My life isn't splendid, but I don't live in a cellar. I walk in the open air. I haven't the power to kick back when people kick me, but I don't let the kicker off: I curse him."
"The cellar's not a prison," I responded.
"But that lair denies you the sun."
I couldn't restrain myself any more and said: "Let's assume that's true. But in my eyes it's better than public toilets." He didn't respond to my words. He pursed his lips and turned his back to me.
Don't imagine that this was the end of our meetings. Every time I meet him I am moved, but I immediately become sad, because even Manfred, who was with me in every part of my life, is hostile to me.
I was born in 1946 in Naples, among the refugees, on the way to Palestine. My mother died right after my birth and my father abandoned me. I looked for him once, but I soon learned that parents abandon damaged offspring when they're infants - though not my mother. My mother left me her picture, her coat, a pendant and a sweater. Through these objects I am bound to her. Almost every day she gives me a warm feeling or a thought that gladdens me. Sometimes she holds me in her arms, and I feel taller. The world to come is not a closed world, as people think. I have a connection to it.
In the winter, when it is very cold and I'm depressed, I put on her sweater. The sweater fits me now and I feel the heat stored up in it, which flows to me. I don't dare wear the coat. It seems to belong to her, and I am forbidden to wrap myself in it. But once, on a stifling and humiliating summer day, I hung the pendant around my neck, and I felt free not only from the tyranny of the heat but also from my limitations.
Several years ago I had the picture of my mother enlarged and framed in gold, and it stands on the dresser in my room. When I look into her eyes, I know that she is thinking about me all the time. Sometimes I feel that her face is protecting me. Her eyes are large, her hair is pulled back and she is wearing a long dress open at the neck. She is very pretty. If I feel distress or pain, I tell her. She answers me with her eyes. If her eyes brighten, I am certain that nothing bad will happen to me that day. But if her eyes are cast down, I know that my desires are leading me astray and I must be careful.
Years ago, I thought of leaving Muenster and opening a sandwich shop of my own. My mother advised me not to do it. One doesn't exchange the certain for the doubtful, her eyes told me. She was right. A dwarf can't allow himself publicity, a success of some kind, or an outstanding achievement. People will fall on him immediately and steal everything from him. A dwarf is doomed to live modestly, to be happy by himself and to bear his depression in silence.
I stopped complaining long ago. My cellar is a shelter that suits my dimensions, and I live in it according to my ability. I eat very little: coffee in the morning, a thin sandwich at lunchtime, and a cup of tea with lemon in the evening. A dwarf must keep to a strict diet. A fat dwarf is a disaster. A dwarf must preserve his body no less than his soul. He is always a target for angry people with bitter souls. Even my employer, Muenster, who makes his living from my work, sometimes leans over and, through the opening, sends me a threat or insult.
To be by myself, I listen to a lot of music. Music bears me on its wings and takes me from place to place, and sometimes even to the place where I was born, to marvellous Naples. I've been told that after the war, a lot of refugees gathered there. Only a few were in sheds, and the rest slept outdoors in tents. My mother made a nest of straw and put me on a white cloth, certain I was a baby like any other. My consolation is that she departed from the world before discovering that I was blemished.
"Your mother was a marvellous woman," a man who sat in the sandwich shop told me years ago.
"She was beautiful," I leaped into his words.
"Very."
"How many days was she my mother?"
"A week, it seems to me, no more. The doctors couldn't save her."
"She's with me all the time," I said, and I was sorry that I had revealed the secret to him.
"You're fortunate," said the man. "We no longer know what true closeness is."
Every Tuesday, I buy two roses and lay them at the foot of the picture. My mother loves flowers. At the sight of the flowers, her face wakes up and she looks at me with joy. On Friday nights, I buy her two bundles of flowers and lay them at either side of the picture.
On Shabbat, her face rests, and a different light glows from it. I feel that I am bound to her with all the cords of my soul. Once Manfred expressed doubt as to whether the picture is of my mother. Tall people, he said, don't give birth to dwarfs. Dwarfs are born of dwarfs. I almost hit him. I was so angry that I bit my lips. Every time he has an opportunity to hurt me, he doesn't let it pass. I assume that I also hurt him, but I, it seems to me, don't do it on purpose.
On Yom Kippur, I sit before the picture and pray directly to it. On Yom Kippur, I belong entirely to her. People say that dwarfs have a limited imagination. They're wrong. I have erased the separation between here and there. On Yom Kippur, I speak to my mother face to face. Once I explained to her exactly where I live and how to get to me. She looked at me and said, "Why should I come to you? For I am with you always."
After an hour of prayer, I feel her closeness in my entire body. It seems to me that her hands, which are not visible in the picture, come out of hiding and seek to hug me. In the afternoon, already dizzy from the fast, I have the feeling that she is about to free herself from the picture frame and approach me. I bow my head and await her. A year ago, she did come out to me. She hugged me and whispered to me: "You are my only son, and except for you, I have no one in the whole wide world."
